ABSTRACT
One of the great spectacles of American politics is the presidential election process. Every four years people who pay only minimal attention to politics find themselves glued in front of a television watching states on electoral maps turn blue or red. It is the political equivalent of the Super Bowl. Yet, as shown in the next two chapters, the presidential election process is unique to say the least. In the next chapter, I discuss the Electoral College and its problems. However, the Electoral College may not be the strangest aspect of presidential elections. The process to choose the major parties’ nominees is severely flawed, leading to an unnecessarily long and complicated election season. “Hardly anyone is a fan of the current presidential nominating process,” writes noted scholar and journalist Rhodes Cook. “The feedback one hears is sometimes colorful, nearly always critical, and ranges from a sense of exasperation to hopelessness that the process can ever be changed for the better.”1
